NOM: Chris Christie Shouldn’t Renege On Marriage Equality Veto

January 24, 2012 11:32 am ET
- by Carlos Maza

As
New Jersey lawmakers inch closer to securing veto-proof support for a marriage
equality bill, the National Organization for Marriage (NOM) is getting pretty
nervous about Gov. Chris Christie’s
commitment to oppose any
legislation legalizing same-sex marriage.

Although
Christie has previously stated that he would veto a same-sex marriage bill, the
governor has become noticeably noncommittal on
the issue over the past few weeks. Last Thursday, he avoided stating he would veto a
billon
marriage equality, instead allegedlytelling a reporter:

“When
forced to make a decision, if forced to make a decision on it, I’ll make a
decision.”

Less
than a week later, Christie again dodged a question about whether hewould veto such
a bill:

“Listen, I’m not in the hypothetical game. They’ve never been
able to get it to a governor’s desk. They couldn’t get it to a governor’s desk
when the governor [who] was there said he would sign it,” he said. [...]

“The fact is this is a huge societal change that they’re
talking about here and I think we need to do this in a very deliberate,
thoughtful way and get the most input from the public we can before we overturn
hundreds of years of societal, legal and religious tradition,” Christie said.

NOM
isnow intent on
reminding Christie about his
commitment to preventingmarriage equality.
Over the past week, the group has published post after post rehashing the
governor’s initial pledge to veto same-sex marriage efforts. The group issued
an “URGENT ALERT”on January 18, asking
supporters to lobby Christie directly. And last Friday,
NOM’s national newsletter warned that the governor “would break a lot of hearts”
if he failed to veto the bill:

Advocates of gay marriage are
counting on Gov. Chris Christie, the truth-teller, the straight talker whom we
all love for his candid fearlessness -- to renege on his clear campaign promise
to veto same-sex marriage.

It would break a lot of hearts to find that Gov. Christie is
really a conventional kind of politician, one who bends and sways in the wind,
one who goes against his word if the big-dollar Republican money guys (who
swayed New York's GOP to pass gay marriage) push hard enough.

Noticeably
absent from NOM’s anti-equality campaign in New Jersey: the group’s usual
“let the people” vote rhetoric. Although the slogan has been one of NOM’s
central talking points in New York and Minnesota,
it hasn’t been a staple of NOM’s recent New Jersey press releases. The change
in messaging strategy probably has something to do with a recent pollfinding that a
strong majority of New Jersey voters would support a
same-sex marriagelaw. NOM made a similar
decision in New Hampshire last year once it became clear that the public
wouldn’t support efforts to repeal the state’s marriage equality law.

NOM likes to portrayitself as a
populist response to gay marriage “elites,” but the group is often more than willing to go against the will of the people (and the legislature) to further its agenda.